When my children were young they were often creative in their mode of play. My nephew was staying with us temporarily, and he and my son had some really fun times playing together. But one evening the two boys gathered up a bunch of apples which had fallen off our tree in the back yard (these were scrubby and green) and took them over to the parking lot of a funeral home around the corner from our house. The parking lot was sloped, and they were rolling these apples down the slope as they played. But they created a problem... when they were through playing, they left the apples there. I was not aware this had happened.
The following morning (a Saturday) I heard knocking on my front door. When I answered the door I was face to face with a tall, dignified-looking gentleman in a suit who was the owner of the funeral home. He told me about the mess the boys had left in his parking lot and that there was going to be a memorial service that afternoon. I told him I would have the boys come clean it up immediately.
I spoke to the boys about how they needed to learn respect for other people's property. I instructed them to take our wagon over to the lot and pick up the apples, and also to go to the door of the home where this man lived (adjacent to the parking lot) and apologize to him for having made a mess. And I went with them to make sure they followed up on my instructions. This man must have been about 6'4" in height, and when he opened the door to these two short little boys he probably scared them. I don't know what he said to them, but they very quickly cleaned up the apple mess.
I really didn't need to say much more to them after that. The lesson was well learned when they had to face that very tall gentleman.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
Proverbs 22:6 KJV
© 2015 Arlene Schwartzkopf